DAVID MARIL: Radio the latest business to suffer from greed, mergers

Sunday

May 23, 2010 at 12:01 AMMay 23, 2010 at 11:00 PM

If talent still matters, you’ll soon hear ‘Matt The Cat’

When corporations merge, the consumers lose, the product suffers and people lose jobs. Radio is no exception. AM and FM have shifted into a vast wasteland mode, filling broadcast schedules with syndicated, repetitious programming that reduces costs and listening audiences. Corporate mergers, while the FCC sleeps, have allowed fewer companies to own more stations and all but eliminate original programming

Satellite radio, which seemed to hold tremendous promise, is following the same negative path. You would think talent, ratings and popularity would carry a lot of influence. That, however, doesn’t seem to be true a few years after the merger of XM and Sirius. Too many talented XM people were let go when the stations merged.

In place of XM’s creative live, programming that interacted with listeners, the satellite conglomeration maintains a slate of cliche-driven radio voices long past their prime – and mostly on tape – mixed in with a group of generic, dull younger “talents.”

Besides XM’s original listeners, one of the people who suffered the biggest loss was ’50s station prime-time host Matt Baldassarri, known to a million or so radio fans as “Matt The Cat”

“Matt The Cat” is everything you’d want to hear as a station host. He’s entertaining, funny and lifts your spirits. He’s also extremely knowledgeable about the roots and evolution of rock ‘n’ roll music. It’s hard to believe he’s only in his early 30s and wasn’t around to promote the early career efforts of pioneers like Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner and Little Willie John.

Listeners were drawn to “Matt The Cat’s” night prowling because of the planning and innovation that went into each show. In less than a year, he tripled the playing list of titles, abandoning the limited play-list of most oldies stations. You were entertained and also informed. Those of us who thought we knew all the inside stuff on the history of rock ‘n’ roll music were surprised to learn plenty of new information about the early years of the industry.

But what else would you expect from a student of modern music who has collected more than 50,000 titles? His oldest recording goes back to a Caruso record from the early 20th century.

“Matt The Cat” decided early he wanted to be a radio music personality. Listening to Dale Dorman on Kiss 108 as a kid and then coming home from school to hear Dorman hosting cartoon programs on the old TV-56, obviously didn’t damper his enthusiasm.

Some of his Boston radio influences include the late Larry Glick, WBZ’s master communicator who ruled the airwaves into the early mornings, and oldies mainstay Joe Martelle.

By the time he was 13, the Topsfield native was being heard on WBMT, a community radio station, as the star of “Friday Night At The Oldies.”

From 1995 to 1998, he hosted “The Soul Bucket” on Boston’s WERS-FM 88.9 while attending Emerson College. His focus was southern soul and R&B from the 1950s through the ’90s.

In 2001, “Matt The Cat” was hired at a new Satellite radio venture called XM. He’d applied for the station’s blues channel but when the ’50s station program director heard his audition tape, he was interested in hiring him.

And for seven years, working for XM in Washington, D.C., he built a devoted nationwide audience of listeners.

But after the merger of XM and Sirius was approved, most XM radio hosts were dismissed and cost-cutting measures were implemented. “Matt The Cat” returned from his honeymoon to do one final show, on Oct. 15, 2008, before losing out in the purge.

Two years later, he’s maintained a large Internet following and recently launched a 1950s rhythm and blues show, which he hopes to syndicate on public radio stations, called “Juke In The Back.” It is airing on KZGM, a public radio station in Missouri.

“Matt The Cat” remains upbeat, positive and does not criticize the radio industry. You have to believe that even with the cost-cutting mentality of the corporate radio world, his talent and infectious enthusiasm will soon put him back on the national scene.

One certainty, Sirius-XM could use him.

David Maril, an Enterprise copy editor, can be reached at dmaril@enterprisenews.com.

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